Mayoring for Bakas!
by Deviant Titles
Summary: A new spin on the Love Hina-verse. Inspired by a text 'Let's Play' of Simcity 3000 whose title and author I can't remember. Sorry... NOTE: I would've crossed this over with the Simcity section, but there's no Simcity section...


Author's Notes: Ah, my break-in title. Here's to hoping it doesn't catch fire. I've prepped a fire extinguisher just in case, though…

Before we start, know now that I know nothing about how Japanese municipalities work. Hell, I don't know how my own (American) municipality works; only how Simcity (4) cities work. So expect Simcity logic throughout the course of this… Deviant Title. *self-satisfied chortling*

Also know that I will exercise practically no discretion with my artistic license regarding this fic, so if that bothers you… Well, this is a crack-fic of sorts, after all.

Disclaimer: Of course I don't own either the Love Hina or Simcity brands.

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><p><strong>Prologue: Answering the Call<strong>

The electronic buzz of an alarm clock suddenly sounded off in the darkness of an unlit bedroom. A sleeping figure woke with a start, bolting upright from his bed and sending a sizable book previously open over his face flying across to the opposite wall. The figure, a young man, glanced over to the offending alarm clock. Four o'clock, the morning it read. Heaving a tired sigh, he silenced the irritating buzzing of the cheaply made alarm clock that was undoubtedly made in some sweatshop.

With a yawn he stretched his arms out above his head and climbed out of bed before blindly feeling around the top surface of an adjacent nightstand for something. He found it after a bit, a pair of coke-bottle eye glasses. Putting them on, he pulled the pull-cord of an antiquated lamp atop the nightstand, illuminating the room. Looking around his bedroom, he despaired slightly at how plain it was, as if it was indicative of his own personality; a basic desk with two drawers and various clutter of books and paper atop it, a sizable wardrobe with an internal mirror containing all his discount and second-hand clothing, a combo coat hanger and umbrella stand that bore an unsettling resemblance to the shadow of a tall, slender man, and a bookcase with a number of textbooks relating to his chosen career and some novels he never got around to reading.

On the matter of books, he went over to the one he launched from his face and picked it up; "Mayoring for Bakas!" was the title, written by one Denver Townshend, obviously a nom de plume. A rather unhelpful self-help title on the subject of city governance with a very unbalanced non sequitur-to-relevant content ratio, with actually useful advise being even more rare. Heaving another sigh through his nose this time, he tossed the book onto his desk and trudged outside into the hallway. Making his way to the bathroom, he made a mental checklist of everything he would need to pack for the trip he was about to embark on that very early morning. Turning on the lights of the bathroom, he looked into the mirror and was not impressed with what he saw; a disheveled nineteen year-old with bed-ruffled brown hair, dull brown eyes, a lanky build, and the geekiest eye glasses ever crafted by an optics laboratory. It was hard to believe, to him at least, that such a sight had a degree in civics and government and had been appointed to become the chief executive authority of a city. Heaving yet another sigh through his mouth this time, he shed his sleepwear from the previous night and washed up in preparation for the day ahead.

After a quick shower and other various bathroom rituals with resultant bodily and facial cleanliness, the young man went back to his bedroom and began packing clothes and other needed items into a pair of sizable suitcases. Casual clothing, office and formal wear, and the same sleepwear from the previous night found themselves hastily stuffed into the suitcases. Chiding himself for not having finished packing at least the night before, he finished by throwing a clothe iron atop the messily folded clothing as a reminder to iron out his now wrinkled figurative wardrobe later on. Shifting his attention to dressing himself, he put on a pair of black slacks, a white short-sleeve button-up shirt, a black blazer coat, and a pair of dress shoes, quite an snazzy ensemble. Going over himself in the mirror inside his tangible wardrobe, he nodded with satisfaction before turning his attention to the briefcase he had the foresight to pack the night before that sat on the floor aside his desk. Picking it up and setting it atop his desk, he released its locks, opening it, and gave it a final examination to ensure he was not missing anything. Satisfied that he was not, he grabbed the book he was reading the night before and tossed it into the briefcase and slammed it shut.

Now burdened with two hefty suitcases and a briefcase, the young man quietly headed downstairs of his family's home, a bakery and sweet shop run by his parents and assisted with by his younger sister and himself. He thought it a pity that they would not be able to see him off, them being asleep and possibly hungover and all, but at least they had all celebrated this milestone of his life the night before, the left over party platters of food and empty spirit bottles being a testament to that. His mother in particular had been very pleased with her son's chosen path in life, smothering his face into her chest and declaring how proud she was of him and stating how distressing it would have been if he had instead done something extraordinarily stupid with his life, like chasing after a fifteen year-old childhood promise to a girl he does not even have the faintest memories of to meet together in one of the most prestigious universities in the world that he would have no chance of being admitted to and not having a plan of action afterwards. It was much to his parents' delight that he had not taken such a monumentally idiotic course.

Setting down his baggage by the entrance, he went to the kitchen in the back of the shop to make himself a quick breakfast before his scheduled pickup by some somewhat shady government types. Brewing a cup of coffee and preparing some toast, he went over one last time in his head of everything he needed before he left. Just as he sat down to his breakfast, he remembered that he had forgotten something. The item in question was not of any official or monetary value, but rather significant personal value. He went back upstairs to his bedroom and found the item inside one of his desk's drawers. A simple, worn sketchpad, filled with drawings and doodles by his own hand. While seemingly innocuous, it was highly sentimental to him, being his only hobby as well as a claim to his artistic abilities, whether he realized them or not. Gently gripping the sketchpad, he headed back downstairs to his still hot breakfast. Quickly stuffing his toast into his mouth and downing his cup of coffee, he then washed the cup and plate he used in his breakfast and cleaned up the mess from the festivities of the previous night before placing a farewell letter to his family on the kitchen table, speaking to his well-adjusted upbringing and overall well-mannered nature. Securing his sketchpad inside his briefcase, the young man picked up his baggage and headed towards the entrance of the shop. Before he stepped outside, he looked at his reflection in the shop's display window and spoke an affirmation to himself on what he was about to do, "Well Keitaro, it's time. Do yourself and your family proud, ay?" His face taking on a confident grin at his self-aimed encouragement, Keitaro stepped outside onto the street with renewed vigor and waited.

And waited. And waited. And waited some more. Waiting on the darkened sidewalk outside his family's shop in the cold of the early morning began to wear on Keitaro's pervious fire of figurative nature. Taking a glance at his wristwatch, he saw that it was only the bottom of the hour; he had moved faster than he thought. As such, his pickup was not due for another twenty minutes. Heaving his fourth sigh that day, He headed back inside with his baggage and sat at the table inside the kitchen.

Helping himself to a bottle of juice, Keitaro extracted "Mayoring for Bakas!" from his briefcase and began going over it again. He had gotten to the fourth chapter before succumbing to sleep from a combination of exhaustion and the exasperating tedium of the author of the book constantly going off-topic onto loosely relevant, highly irrelevant, and sometimes completely alien tangents. The chapter had initially been about the introduction of a public water supply into a city before degenerating into mad rants about a secret underwater city built during the 1940s in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean by a demented industrial tycoon with an extreme Objectivist belief system. Keitaro could only shake his head and chuckle at such a preposterous notion.

After a short while, the sharp horn of a car cut through the stillness of the early morning, tearing him away from his perusing of his book. Understanding that his pickup had finally arrived, he replaced the book back into his briefcase and got together his belongings and wits. Patting his pockets to ensure he was not without his personal effects, he stepped back out onto the streets from his family's shop for the last time.

Pulled along side him was a black luxury sedan of European make. The driver stepped out from the left side, a gangly older gentlemen in a driver's cap and uniform, and offered to relieve Keitaro of his baggage. Keitaro happily obliged him and glanced one last time at his family's shop before getting into the car, as it would be the last time he saw it in person for a good, long while. Inside the vehicle was another gangly gentlemen of advanced years, wearing dark, obscuring glasses and a cheap, gray business suit and whose face was further obscured by curiously angled shadows. Taking a seat alongside the man, Keitaro presented a smile and offered his hand while trying to discreetly make out the man's facial features. While mostly failing, he did notice that the man had a rather fetching mustache. The two men began conversing as the car started and began down the road towards the waterfront.

"Ah, we finally meet face-to-face, Mister Urashima. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." spoke the man as he took Keitaro's hand and shook it rather vigorously.

"Eh heh heh. Likewise, Mister…" Keitaro awkwardly trailed off, having now just realized he never learned his mysterious contact's name during their previous communications by way of fax and telephone, only knowing him as his designated bureaucratic liaison at the Ministry of Bureaucratic Government and Governmental Bureaucracy, an actual government agency.

"Just call me DT." replied the man after an awkward cough, having now just realized that he never informed Keitaro of his name during their previous communications by way of fax and telephone, only referring to himself as Keitaro's designated bureaucratic liaison at the Ministry of Bureaucratic Government and Governmental Bureaucracy, an actual government agency.

"DT." repeated Keitaro. There was an odd silence between the two men while Keitaro thought on how to progress the conversation. He decided that now was the best time to ask any last-minute questions while he still had the chance. While a number of important questions were going through his head regarding where he was being taken and what he was to do once he arrived at wherever that was, there was one particular question that was at the forefront of his mind, one that had bothered him since he learned his designated bureaucratic liaison's name, and was the one he decided to indulge an inquiry of…

"Say, you wouldn't happen to be the same DT who wrote 'Mayoring for Bakas!,' would you?"

DT gawked at Keitaro for his random and off-handed question for the briefest moment before shaking his head in denial, "Oh God no! This is just an alias assigned to me by the Ministry of Bureaucratic Government and Governmental Bureaucracy. Nothing more than coincidence that I share it with the DT you're speaking of, Mister Urashima. Good God, I'd rather shoot myself than even be associated with the social deviant that wrote that abhorrent title. Why do you ask?"

Keitaro blinked at the last bit of DT's response before deciding to move on to a more relevant topic, "Uh, right. No reason. So, I've gone over the papers you've sent me, but I'm still a little confused as to what I'm supposed to do or even where this 'Hinata City' is. I got the gist of it, that it's a small island community that just started out and I'm taking over as acting mayor, but for how long? What's the city's present state and overall situation, and where it even is? And what happened to the last mayor? A lot of stuff in these papers got redacted, apparently. Am I not supposed to know some things, or what?"

Unfazed by Keitaro's polite badgering, DT cleared his throat before answering, "In order: an indeterminate period of time, you'll see when you get there, the Hinata Province, she's on vacation, no, you're not."

Keitaro blinked once more at DT's rapid-fire response. It was so ordered and given so quickly, it was if it was pre-fabricated by some external force that was exerting influence and direction over DT's, and possibly his own actions…

Shaking away such thoughts before they caused an onset of paranoia, he gave the matter one last prod before moving on, "Okay… But I take it that these will eventually be made known to me, right?"

DT gave a nod of affirmation to that, "Yes. In due time, you'll be made privy to these matters. But for now, we just want you settled in and getting into the motion of things once you get there. It'll be a 'learn as you go' kind of deal."

Satisfied for now, Keitaro dropped the subject and took out a manila envelope from his briefcase containing the various documents that made up the assignment dossier sent to him by DT, "Well, if it's alright, I'm going to give these one last go-over, since the docks are a bit ways out. We're getting to Hinata City by boat, I assume?"

With a slight nod of approval, DT grinned at Keitaro's diligent attitude, "We certainly are. While you do that, I think I'll nod off for a bit. Wake me when we get there, yeah?" With that, DT checked out almost immediately.

Slightly envious at the older man for being able to count sheep while he had to further strain his already strained eyesight by squinting at the small print of the assignment, Keitaro began a thorough and methodical reading of the dossier.

The first document of the dossier was best described as "introductory fluff," not going far from a most basic briefing of his assignment as the acting mayor of Hinata City and the accompanying duties as such. It would have felt more complete and useful if not for the various redactions, blacking out text that even alluded to more specific details about the assignment. The most egregious example of this was a map of the Hinata Province and Hinata City's relative location within it… all of which was blacked out, leaving nothing but a black piece of paper, which raised the question of why it was included in the dossier in the first place. The rest of the document that was not redacted was comprised of generic congratulatory praise for being selected for the assignment and reassuring platitudes regarding his projected competence and skill as a mayor and that the assignment would be easy as pie, a metaphor Keitaro took slight offense to, given his upbringing in a bakery

The next document was of significantly greater interest to him, being about some of his mayoral powers regarding direct city governance. It outlined basic abilities like designating zoning for residential, commercial, and industrial development, setting up vital utilities like electrical power and water, and laying out roads and other transportation options, all of which sounded like a logistical nightmare. Just as a migraine of epic proportions began to take hold of his head, he came across a footnote that informed him that an entire engineering corps would be allotted to his administration to assist him in this regard. All he needed to do was point to where he wanted something built and provide the funds for it and they would take care of the rest. Giving a hum of interest and an internal thanks to the document's writer's impressive foresight, Keitaro read on.

The subject of the next document was about more advance topics of city governance, specifically his duties to manage and approve the city's budget, enact needed ordinances and retract unneeded ones, and provide services like fire, police, health, education, recreation, etcetera, all the while keeping the city's balance sheets from going into the red. As he read, he could not help but feel a bit intimidated at the prospect of managing an entire municipality. Each bit of text seemed to hint at obscene volumes of paperwork. Just as with the previous document, he again stumbled upon a footnote before his head began to throb that assured that help would be provided to him in this matter; a team of statisticians would be under his employ to gather and compile the data necessary for him to keep from running Hinata City into the ground. Again, Keitaro was impressed with the writer's foresight.

The final document was titled "Terra-forming," which piqued his interest, as the term "terra-forming" was rarely used outside of a science-fiction and/or ironic context. But, as with the first document and map of the Hinata Province, the entirety of the document was redacted and blacked out, leaving him with yet more black pieces of paper.

Heaving his fifth sigh that day, Keitaro began replacing the documents back into the manila envelope when he noticed a small, hand-written note addressed to him that fell onto his lap while he was reading, apparently tucked between the documents. Curious that he missed it before, he grabbed it and read its message to him. It stated that his advisors with whom he has yet to meet will help him get oriented and support his administration of Hinata City in any way they can, and that he should have confidence in himself as a mayor and person overall. The writer's signature read "The Office of the Mayor of Hinata City."

Smiling lightly at his predecessor's words of encouragement, Keitaro slid the note back into the envelope with the assignment dossier. Deciding that he may as well join DT in catching a few Zs before getting to the docks, he let his posture slouch and nodded off to the barely audible snore of the snoozing DT besides him.

He awoke to something poking his shoulder, groggily opening his eyes to a fully awake DT prodding him with a manila folder, "Rise and shine, Mister Urashima. We're here."

With a nod, Keitaro sat upright and vigorously shook his head, dispelling all remnants of sleep from him. As he did, DT held out the folder he had been poking him with to him, indicating that he should take it. Accepting the folder, he looked it over curiously before asking DT its purpose, "What's this for?"

"It's a dossier of the Hinata City Advisory Board. You may want to look over it during the boat trip. Lovely bunch of lasses." replied DT, his glasses taking on a glint as he put on a somewhat mischievous grin.

It took Keitaro a moment to fully register what DT. Blinking, he was fully open about his astonishment, "Lasses? Girls? All of them?"

DT only laughed at his dumfounded expression, "Just read that dossier. Oh hey! We're here!"

Indeed, they had finally reached their destination of the waterfront. Dilapidated docks, perilous piers, and worn warehouses; Keitaro heaved his sixth sigh that day, thinking it a shame that such a sight would be his last one of his hometown for a long time. The car made a full-stop near a jetty with a dingy, old ferry anchored along side it. Keitaro, DT, and the driver stepped out of the car into the slight smog permeating the docks of the waterfront. The driver retrieved Keitaro's baggage from the trunk of the car and handed them to one of the ferry's deck hands waiting on the jetty as Keitaro and DT walked up to the ferry's gangplank. DT turned to the aspiring mayor-to-be and gave his farewell, "Well, Mister Urashima, this is where we part company. This ferry will take you Hinata City. You'll be met by your city planner once you get there. Here's to your administration's success!"

With that, DT held out his hand to Keitaro, who obliged him and shook his hand, "Thank you, DT. I'll do my best."

Keitaro turned towards the ferry and appraised its seaworthiness; his findings were not to his liking. An aged two-deck passenger ferry with a pair of rusted-over smokestacks and a chipping white and blue paintjob. Most notable, and worrying, was the alarming amount of patchwork on the hull. Turning to the deck hand who had previously taken his baggage from the driver, Keitaro tried to determine how safe the vessel was without coming off as a complete landlubbin' wuss, "So, uh, is this thing seaworthy?"

The deck hand only laughed a jolly and slightly mocking seaman's laugh, put burly and muscled arm around Keitaro's shoulders, and shoved the hapless future mayor across the gangplank and followed him onboard the ferry. The ferry's steam whistle bellowed, signifying the its departure, while the deck hand raised the gangplank. Keitaro turned to take one last look at his hometown as the ferry pulled away from the jetty and into open waters. DT waved a final goodbye as Keitaro did the same.

Heaving his first content sigh that day, Keitaro walked to the open-air sitting area at the bow of the ferry and took a seat on the wooden benching. Taking a deep breath of smoke and coal dust belched from the ferry's smokestacks mixed in with the bitter seawater air and immediately regretting doing so, he gagged slightly and flipped opened the folder DT had given him and began reading up on his future advisors' profiles.

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><p><span>More Author's Notes:<span> Hmm… I feel like I rushed the last few bits of the prologue. How 'bout you guys leave a review and tell me?

Anyway, next time we meet the Hinata City Advisory Board! Both in paper and person! I wonder who'll comprise it…


End file.
